How I Quit My Job and Traveled for 2 Years as a Digital Nomad

Sharon Tseung 0:00
Hey guys, it’s Sharon from Digital Nomad Quest and today is going to be a fun video about how I quit my job and travel the world for two years as a digital nomad. And basically what a digital nomad

is, it’s someone who is able to work location independently all around the world wherever they want to go, because all their work can be done on their laptop, they make their money through the laptop, right? It could be skills through marketing, coding design. And what I did, though, I wanted to not only work remotely, I also wanted to learn how to build passive income. Alright, so let’s back up to 2014. So in 2014, I did a month long solo year trip. And basically what I saw was I saw people living life fulfilling their dreams, pursuing their passions, and I was inspired. I wanted to see what else was out there. Because I had been working for about four to five years as a marketing professional at various startups in Google. And I was grateful I’m super grateful and super privileged. But, you know, I wanted to know what else was out there because I had been living in the Bay Area for for about 20 something years, I had been working at an office for so long, you know, you’re going day to day to an office eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, you’re spending most of your life at work. So I wanted to see if there’s a way I could kind of live life and not have to be restricted into the life out of cubicle or an office. So basically, what I did was after that Europe trip, I started studying a lot of bugs. I started looking into real estate investment. It led me to other passive income sources through online businesses. I learned more about digital nomad life after reading books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and four hour workweek, I was inspired to kind of see alternate lifestyles, Rich Dad, Poor Dad taught me that I could make money work for me instead of work for money. And then four hour workweek kind of made me learn more about the digital nomad lifestyle. So it all inspired me, I started studying a lot, a lot, a lot. And then I ended up booking a one way ticket to start home, about six months out for me of 2016. I knew that I could just not go if I wasn’t prepared. But I said, put that deadline for myself. And it was only $150 for the ticket. It is kind of a lot of money. But I thought you know, if I wasn’t ready to make that life change, I could totally just not go keep working at my job. But I didn’t want to be that person who was wondering what if with my life, like, what if I took that chance, instead of worked at a cubicle for eight years, 20 years, 30 years, you know, whatever. So I put that deadline on myself. I was like, Okay, I got six months to prep. So how I prepped was I started actually taking action on the things I learned. So I started working on building income through like Kindle books. And see I started making money on merge by Amazon, Amazon FBA, blogging, affiliate marketing. So there’s a lot of ways to make passive income online. And, you know, this channel is all about that. So I will be teaching you guys through these videos. Anyway, back to it, though. So I started working on those income channels. And after I made some income, like per month, I started realizing it’s all possible even if it were under $100 a month, I knew that I could make passive income. So I started studying that more, I also took part time job. So I looked on Craigslist and upward, I started looking for marketing positions that I could do remotely, I also asked friends and family and I was able to secure two part time positions, making like about a grand a month each. And then I was able to do that on top of my full time work that led me to increasing my nest egg, as well as kind of securing these remote positions in case I had issues with building up passive income. So it led me to the smooth transition right afterwards, I quit my job in May of 2016. I told the company like my boss, look, I am planning to travel for about a year. And I basically quit my job and they actually let me do a part time position working for them remotely. So that ended I’ve been really awesome. I got three remote part time positions to kind of ramp up on my passive income while I was traveling while I was doing these positions. So I had a great transition period to orgs passive income. So my whole journey while I was traveling was not to kind of spend on my income and then just like go back to zero dollars and then work a full time job again, my idea was I wanted to create this new lifestyle where I could be financially free, and I could pursue the life of my dreams. So in order to do that, I knew I had to work. It was not a vacation to travel. I was doing a work vacation. So every day I was going to a cafe like I had schedules I was working on my laptop and meeting other nomads who are doing similar things, other entrepreneurs side hustlers and I was actually grinding I was like working on building these passive income streams. So I basically ended up going to Europe for about six months. And then Asia for another six months, started off in Stockholm went to Greece, Romania, Portugal, Germany, London, went to Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, there’s so many different places I went to, I was saying about a month at each place. Sometimes I did little trips here and there, but mainly a month at each place so that I can live that local life and also work on my passive income pursuits. So I was grinding, I was hustling, like, it was not a total vacation. But at the same time because I was able to travel while I was working. It was fine. It wasn’t

like I was trapped in my own room doing work. I was living life and seeing things. So that’s the benefit of being able to be a digital nomad as well as an entrepreneur at the same time. So because I was pretty smart about my finances, I was able to transition from part time work to passive income and I was able to substantially increase my net worth as well as increase my passive income streams about four grand a month. One thing I did also was I researched the places I wanted to stay at so I booked six months of flights and accommodations before I even left. So it was not spontaneously Oh, where do I want to go next? Where do I want to go next? You know, it’s a lot cheaper to book in advance, right. And also, when you book on Airbnb, if you book a month at each time, you can save a lot of money versus day to day because they have discounts. Another thing is when you go on sites like Nomad lyst, calm and Namibia calm and you MB o calm, you’re able to see the cost of living at all these different destinations, you’re also able to see where digital nomads tend to go and which places are fun, which places are safe, which places are cost friendly. These were very important factors for me to choose the places I wanted to stay at. It’s important to do that research before you leave. So I recommend doing that. So basically, after a year of travel, I ended up doing another year and went around us Canada and then went back out to Asia spent a lot of time in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I spent about $600 a month in Chiang Mai Thailand each month, I spent about four months there, and it’s so cheap living there and you still can manage a really nice quality of life. So when I realized that I realized that I could actually save money and is pretty cost efficient actually to build my businesses abroad. So essentially, that was how I was able to quit my job and travel for two years as a digital nomad and build my passive income online. While I was doing that, to recap, I would do research on countries and places to stay do research on passive income, digital nomad life, everything. If you follow my channel, I’m going to be talking about all of these things. So then also save up to two years of expenses. You can do this by kind of calculating how much it costs to live at each of these places. So yeah, if this is something you want to do, make sure you put deadlines on yourself take action on all the passive income streams and all the research you gotta do and just go for number four, be safe when you’re out there. And then number five, dive into the community of digital nomads and entrepreneurs and just make friends that way and then get that support you need so that you can make this life decision. So if you have any questions or comments, let me know. And if you’re planning to quit and become a digital nomad, leave a comment below and tell me what’s your biggest challenge when it comes to quitting your job and pursuing passive income streams? Let me know BE SURE TO SHARE, COMMENT, LIKE subscribe, all of that. It really means a lot to me, and I hope to see you in the next video.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai